Civilization

Civilization

I've been rolling this one over in my mind for some time, though I read it months ago. Assembling my thoughts. I can't say I was fully satisfied with the book, thigh it was in many ways accurate, pithy, and gave some food for thought.

I suppose some of the best aspects of the book were just the accuracy of the six aspects of civilization that have caused the West in the last 500 years to gain such an ascendancy in the world. In the main he uses comparative analyses to determine why this society falls and that one thrives. There is only one China, only one America, so there isn't the availability of several Chinas to experiment on to view how they might develop differently had they been placed under different conditions. In other words, history has no control group like the hard sciences. Still, he succeeds fairly well at this.

The weakness of the book is the fact that he begins with an argument against some philosophy of a historical particle. That history doesn't have particles. I see this argument often, but I don't know where the authors arguing for a history particle (aside from myself) are. It is as if historians feel some sense of the consistency of behavior in the objects of history, which speak of laws, and the historian then proceeds to invent a philosopher that argues such, only to take a stand against this. Like inventing your own opponent.

Yet while stating at the beginning that there is no historical particle, no laws or properties to historical objects, he then compares fairly similar civilizations to determine those qualities that made the west powerful. He ends with a bit of exaggeration and hyperbolic overextension of conclusions. He more than hints at collapse of the west. As if the behaviors of the past, despite there being no particles, properties, or laws, are predictive of our inevitable destruction.

There it ends. He doesn't take it to the next step that the world may instead, with the West in the lead (for better or worse), be on the brink of a transformation into an unheard of society that will look as different from us in 300 years as the world previous to the American and French revelations does now. I think of Jeremy Rifkin and others who are presenting other more positive and exciting pictures of the future.

If the "six apps" are all there is, and nothing new can appear, then indeed, the West is doomed as it leaves much of these qualities behind, as the East adopts them.

Generally an OK read for the various comparisons of societies.